Marilyn Maye turning 90 with everything a singer could wish for

Marilyn Maye, who turns 90 on April 10, has been performing since childhood.

Photo: Courtesy�Feinstein�s at the Nikko

On the verge of her 90th birthday, Marilyn Maye treats aging with extravagant defiance. It’s not that she’s taken up skydiving or started running marathons. Rather, the vocalist whom Ella Fitzgerald often hailed as “the greatest white singer in the world” keeps setting the standard for jazz-inflected interpretation of American Songbook gems.

While often described as a cabaret artist, Maye grew up when swing and popular music were often one and the same. Jazz musicians recognize her as a kindred spirit. In her own shows, Maye’s taste in material is impeccable, but she’s hardly dependent on Berlin, Porter, Arlen and the Gershwins, et al. Earlier this month, Maye spent a weekend with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra singing nursery rhymes arranged as vehicles for modern jazz.

While her actual birthday is April 10, she’s spent the past few months celebrating the impending milestone. She jokes that after all the buildup, she might open her two-night stand at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on Friday-Saturday, March 23-24, with “At Last,” but otherwise there’s no particular theme.

“I’m doing the songs that work,” she said. “Fans want to hear what they want to hear, but about 50 percent of my act is new. It’s funny, ‘Guess Who I Saw Today’ is my most requested song. I tell people, ‘You know how it ends!’”

When you’re taking a musical sojourn with Maye, knowing a song’s destination often increases the pleasure of the journey. Her voice is in remarkable shape, but what makes her a marvel is her mind. She approaches every song with a detailed, emotionally revelatory road map, a chart that she designs herself.

“People think the pianist does the arrangements,” said Maye, who will perform with pianist Billy Stritch this weekend. “I have incredible, brilliant pianists, but I do my arrangements. I’ve done that my entire life. The structure of the things I sing are mine. I create the intros and endings, and the ideas for medleys.”

Born in Wichita, Kan., Maye started competing in amateur contests as a tot, and was only 14 when she landed her own radio show in Des Moines, where she settled with her mother after her parents divorced. In her early 20s, she was working a nightly supper club gig at the Colony in Kansas City, Mo., when Steve Allen came by to hear her in 1961.

Allen invited her on as a guest on his television talk show, which led to her recording a series of classic albums for RCA and becoming a regular guest on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.” In an era when network television dominated popular culture, Maye was ubiquitous.